research

How good it is to migrate every day!
How beautiful it is to stop somewhere every day!
How nice it is to flow without freezing and getting muddy!
What word that belongs to yesterday,
Is gone, my loved one, with yesterday,
Now is the time to say new things.

Jalal ud-din Rumi

In time, we forgot about happiness of first moments of relationships, of new starts, of choices. In time we focus on the end, the reward and outcome. Instead of the mindful movement of the beginning, we direct our gaze to end. We get easily trapped by the thought that “we should finish’’ “we should be successful” “we should have a promotion, or degree” just to be happy again.

This occurred to me when I was just thinking about my PhD adventure. I have been in my program around 5 years now. In time, I totally forgot about why I chose to pursue a PhD, why I chose my topic, why I decided to be in academia. Only thing prevailed in my mind is my obsession with finishing it whatever it takes. Last couple of days, I just sat back, and tried to untie myself from my exhaustion with my research. I tried to remember the time (which was even before I started to university) when I made my decision to pursue an academic career. And I also tried to remember that I chose a life as a researcher just for the joy of researching, creative epiphany movements in writing, and joy of sharing experience and knowledge with people around me. Not for money, not for a big career, or fancy toys…

I also remembered that as a lifelong nomad, I wanted to be in that present movement (in a distinct part of the world) reading my books, researching on different topics, and being able to travel. That made me realize our modern world does not accept us successful unless we reach to a strong position in a big university, or we reach the best funding, or we finish what we are working on quickly to jump into another thing. The system tries to inflict its obsession with success, time and ends on us.

That is why I just prefer to remember how I loved the process, how I loved being on the way instead of reaching the end of story.